


Two Three

by CassidyHartwick



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dead Sherlock, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pining, Pining John, Post-Reichenbach, Presumed Dead, Reichenbach Feels, Seriously There Is So Much Pining, Suicidal John, Suicidal John Watson, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal!John, Suicide, What-If, gotta love it tho, john is a smol boy, protect him, sherlock is an asshole even though he's not technically in the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 23:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11451702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassidyHartwick/pseuds/CassidyHartwick
Summary: He weighed it in his palms, running his knuckles along the chamber. Playing his fingertips across the trigger. John didn’t grimace, he didn’t smile. His face was concave, like the mind beyond its surface that had been run dry of emotions long ago. At first he had teetered between despondency and rage, until those vibrancies faded into the oily, bleak darkness.And he was so tired of feeling hollow.





	Two Three

_"Goodbye, John."_

 

 

He could still hear his voice. Feel it.

 

They were the two words that were tearing him apart.

 

John had been damaged for a long time - deeply, fundamentally so - but the glue that fastened him to the hinge between sanity and the void beyond was slowly waning. He could feel his will to remain, to not teeter off the edge, dissipate with each passing day.

 

Because it’s an interesting prospect. Death. We all know it's coming - stalking through the bushes all our lives, waiting to catch its prey in a moment of vulnerability - but one can never truly grasp the impact that it may have until it’s cool, slender fingers slap them square across the jaw.

 

Even in the greatest depths of Sherlock's obsession with Moriarty, John had not come to this moment. He was too caught up in it all - the adrenaline, the exhilaration - to fully comprehend the finality of it. The wavering breeze of decay that accompanied every confident footstep as the beast lurked ever nearer in its hunt.

 

_He was such fucking idiot._

 

Because it was only when Sherlock's skull collided with the pavement that he finally noticed. Everything crashed disastrously and harmoniously into position, as if the downpour had turned into a flood before he even realized that it was raining.

 

It had been too late. He had been too late.

 

And then came now.

 

He made tea in the mornings. Boiled the kettle. Reached into the cupboard to pull out a dwindling bag of English Breakfast. Next to it, a tin of Earl Grey collected dust.

 

He went to work. Took a taxi there, rummaged for scrubs, saw a few patients. No texts during the day, most days. Ms. Hudson wouldn’t let go of her landline, Stamford was a busy man, and there was certainly no reason for Lestrade to need him. Sometimes he received a pity check-in from Molly.

 

Then he went straight home.

 

Shuffled back into the flat, changed back into stained pyjamas or a worn Arsenal t-shirt. Sat on the couch to flip through crap telly channels, and just stared.

 

He spent a lot of time doing that nowadays.

 

Behind him various mementos loomed. His coat hung at the door, Mycroft having placed it there. His violin sat untouched by the windowsill. His chair stewed next to it. He hadn’t the heart to move any of it.

 

Besides, it didn’t matter now.

 

Then he went to bed. On the worse nights, where sleep was most unknown and thoughts were most unyielding, images of the semi-automatic in his bedside drawer meandered across his mind. He didn’t take it out, though. Most of the time.

 

He had been damaged before, naturally, as a lifelong soldier and incomprehensible attractor-of-woe. But this time was different. As if the part that had shattered was deeper, more essential to the system.

 

Because the heart is a bitter, reckless thing. And because John Watson had loved Sherlock Holmes.

 

In every gaze across the kitchen as the detective was turned towards his work, eyes creeping across the barrel of his shoulders and down the column of his spine. In every delicate pirouette, curls bobbing across his forehead as sunlight streamed through the bay windows when he didn’t think John could see. In every spat or gentle word that vibrated through his very bones.

 

In every way, in every moment, in every heartbeat, he had loved him. But words were too fragile to speak, and could never have conveyed enough. How his heartstrings quivered with those of the violin, or how every breath into Sherlock’s lungs seemed to take the air out of his.

 

Yes, he was cliched. But love is cliched too.

 

And then came now.

 

Now Sherlock was dead. He was nothing but a carcass, a sack of rotting bones. But his heart cared little for death. It lingered in the muddied past, in the moment of the fall. It was still there - suspended in the second that light left Sherlock’s eyes - and he couldn’t seem to retrieve it.

 

So now he sat on the edge of his bed. Three fifty seven in the morning. Semi-automatic in hand.

 

He weighed it in his palms, running his knuckles along the chamber. Playing his fingertips across the trigger. John didn’t grimace, he didn’t smile. His face was concave, like the mind beyond its surface that had been run dry of emotions long ago. At first he had teetered between despondency and rage, until those vibrancies faded into the oily, bleak darkness.

 

And he was so tired of feeling hollow.

 

He peered at the weapon, flipping the gun over in his hands.

 

_What if what if what if -_

 

He paused for a second, his breath hitching. A faint blossom of ivory peeked through the shadowed barrel, lodged deep within the cylinder of ebony steel. He turned the gun towards his face, moving it close to his eye in order to gaze down the void of the chamber.

 

It was too large to be his eye playing tricks on hims, so perhaps. . . an object of sorts?

 

He turned the gun towards his floor, shaking it until the pale object drifted onto his lap. Coated in a thin film of dust, a note.

 

_What?_

 

How - rather, _why_ would someone have put anything there? No one even knew that he kept the weapon in his bedside. Besides, the dust - it would have needed to be placed months ago -

 

_Oh._

 

He had predicted this. He had known. That _bastard_.

 

John raised a hand to his forehead, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his brow. He breathed. Right, then.

 

He lifted the slip of paper, holding it gently between his fingers; the calloused, unwavering hands of a soldier past his prime. He breathed. He read the words scrawled across it.

 

He breathed.

 

Somewhere very far from London, Sherlock breathed with him.

 

He moved the note to his lips, pressing his eyes shut as he felt it, drank it in. The fragmented remains of Sherlock and stability and _Before_ glowed warm inside his chest, and the glue holding him beyond the void solidified.

 

Because there were two words that tore John apart, but three that kept him together.

 

_"I love you."_

**Author's Note:**

> Oooooooh boy, gotta love some good ol' post Reichenbach angst. This is my first fic (yes, ever) so I figured it would be a good jumping off point. 
> 
> Lots of thanks to DownpourOfFeels for inspiring this through her writing contest! Would never have written this without you.
> 
> Also - feedback feedback feedback! It really means the world. :)


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